


my heartbeat is a slow one

by malachiical



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Rivals to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 10:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21159980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malachiical/pseuds/malachiical
Summary: Dacian decides he hates Falk, a new student and rival vampire. To his own aggravation, it doesn't really stick.





	my heartbeat is a slow one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seashellcolors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashellcolors/gifts).

> Title is from the song Dracula's Wedding by Outkast.

Dacian stepped over the foot that shot out to trip him as he stepped into the lecture hall, with the practice of one who’d done so about a thousand times before, with his usual supernatural grace. “Hello, Beelzebub,” he said—without sarcasm, because _hello_ was a decent enough translation of Beelzebub’s attempts to trip him.

“I told you,” Beelzebub said, lips curling to show his unpleasant teeth, “it’s Beez.”

“I’m not calling you Beez,” Dacian said flatly. “You hate nicknames. You only want people to call you Beez now to be an asshole.”

It was true. Beelzebub had, for the many years that Dacian had known him, threatened and intimidated and outright made miserable anyone who’d dared to shorten his name in any way, shape, or form. Since they’d met Bees at the start of college, however—who was a hive of about two hundred bees in a human-shaped skin-suit—Beelzebub had immediately realized about half a dozen new ways to make everyone’s lives a little bit worse. This was the mildest of them, but Dacian knew it was a bad idea to just let Beelzebub get away with everything. He got too cocky and then he was just impossible to be around for a decade or so until he cooled down again.

“Szo?”

“Whatever you’re talking about, shut up.” Hana swept into the room, tossing her long hair, and a solid 80% of Beelzebub’s flies peeled away from him to get some distance. Whenever Hana was around, the low buzzing that followed Beelzebub like the world’s worst soundtrack got a whole lot quieter, which was a damn good thing when Bees showing up just about doubled the droning noise. Without Hana’s mitigating presence, it went from just far enough above white noise to be aggravating to I-can’t-actually-hear-myself-think levels. Beelzebub loved it. “Dacian, I thought vampires were supposed to be _hot.”_

“Bold words when that’s not even your real face, Little Miss Muffet.”

Hana paused and stared at him. “I can’t decide whether to call you stupid or appreciate the implication that the spider killed her and stole her body,” she admitted. “I’m not insulting _you_ this time. There’s a vampire in my lit class and he’s ugly as sin. Something went _wrong_ in your weird undead family tree, he actually makes you less hot just by association.”

“Don’t be an idiot. If some vampires are hideous, obviously that makes my natural beauty more notable,” Dacian said. “Anyway. We’re in college. Aren’t we getting a little old to still be mean girls?”

“Hey, juzt becuz two hundred iz old for you doezn’t mean it’z old for me, grandpa.” Beelzebub grinned. “Besidez, I’ll always be the meanezst girl. Heeeyyy, boo,” he added as Bees walked in, raising the volume of the buzzing again just in time for the lecturer to start talking. They made a beeline to Beelzebub (Dacian immediately scolded himself for the pun) and Beelzebub immediately put an arm around their collective waist, pet names and PDA being two more of the ways he’d found to annoy literally everyone around him.

Dacian leaned over and whispered, “You know they’re only dating you for your flies, right?”

“Get fucked.”

  


* * *

  


It took about two and a half more nights for Dacian to actually see the vampire that Hana had been talking about; they didn’t seem to share any classes until politics. He almost didn’t bother looking, either, and it was about fifteen minutes into the class before his brain nagged at him and directed his attention over—and then he stared.

This vampire wasn’t just ugly, he was Orlokian.

Dacian prided himself on his beauty and taste and had for the past two hundred years, but he wasn’t _vapid._ Quite the opposite, and he prided himself on that, too. He certainly knew his history, and there was no way this vampire, with his bone structure exaggerated to the point of being uncomfortable to look at, his long face, and his large, slightly pointed ears wasn’t descended from Count Orlok. That particular offshoot of vampires had been nearly wiped out in the middle ages, then had suffered again in the 1800s, but they always seemed to resurface, maybe slightly less obvious each time than the last but their distinctly inhuman traits refusing to be stamped out entirely.

And Hana wasn’t wrong; he was on many levels hideous. Cheekbones and an interesting paleness were attractive, but Orlokians tended towards the corpselike, with bone definition that too clearly showed the shape of their skulls in general. But Dacian felt an undeniable pull of fascination. He found himself tilting his head, trying to get a look at the other vampire’s hands—long fingers, but not nearly as claw-like as he might have expected—trying to spot his teeth when he opened his mouth—_those_ lived up to the legends, jagged and all sharp rather than four neat subtle fangs. Feeding must be an inelegant affair with fangs like those, and the thought made him shiver, surprised with his own reaction.

He was distractible. Dacian had always aced politics, but the quiz they took that day was just embarrassing (by his standards): an 88%, and the professor noted that Falk, whose name Dacian only learned the moment he decided to hate him, had been the only person to get an A.

  


* * *

  


“He wants to target _Alan Kelly_ as his thrall,” Dacian seethed. “I have been following that man’s political career for a _decade._ I’ve even started seeding money into his campaign. And now that he stands real chance of becoming mayor in the next election, this upstart thinks he can swoop in and take advantage of the _obvious_ choice?”

“How’d that come up? Class project?” Hana asked. “Or have you been chatting with him again?”

“It’s not chatting!” Dacian drew himself up in his seat, offended. “I’m keeping my eye on a political rival. I suppose a spider wouldn’t understand anything that intricate; you think you can just eat all your problems.”

“I can just eat all my problems,” Hana corrected idly. “So you’re chatting with your political rival. It still sounds like you have a stupid high-school crush on him.”

“Don’t even joke.” Dacian sneered, genteelly. “He drives me completely—”

He knew his mistake even before Beelzebub jumped in, but there was no stopping him. “Batty?”

Dacian groaned, easily drowning out May’s burst of cackling laughter. Hana’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, May was a Krasue, not quite a vampire but some weird kind of Thai spirit that had a living body during the day—which it was now—but floated around headless with hanging intestines sucking blood and _way worse things_ at night—during which absolutely everyone refused to eat with her, because seriously. Dacian wasn’t quite sure what made her a spirit rather than another vampire offshoot, but she insisted that she wasn’t one. She also had this thing where sometimes, usually when she was laughing or singing, her voice got really quiet when you were close to her and really loud the further away you got. Dacian saw a few people from several yards away jerk their heads in their direction.

“That is the exact same stupid joke Falk made the other day,” he seethed. “That’s the worst part! He’s so _confident,_ in his intelligence and his abilities and his horrible sense of humor. He even acts like he thinks he’s _attractive.”_

“Oh, I’m sorry, weren’t we getting too old to be mean girls?” Hana mocked.

“I’m sorry, but I’m with Hana on this one,” May said, reaching over to steal one of Beelzebub’s fries (soaked in an absolutely stomach-turning mix of ketchup, mustard, and ranch, and crawling with flies, though the ones on that particular fry flew away before May could pop it in her mouth). “You sound really into this guy, and just super pissed off about it.”

“You are the worst friends.”

“That’z our job,” Beelzebub, probably the closest thing Dacian had to a best friend since middle school, said with a smirk absolutely calculated to be as obnoxious as possible.

“Well, you’re doing it,” Dacian said. “And I promise, I still hate him way, way more than I hate you guys. Somehow.”

  


* * *

  


After politics, Dacian had both a literature and a biology class with Falk, then a psychology class. It was during their shared math class, when their talks had become so regular that Dacian sometimes forgot to completely resent Falk during them (a fact which he swore to never admit to; he knew he’d never live it down), that Falk finally brought up Alan Kelly again, and in a way that very nearly shook Dacian’s flawless poise for once.

“I found something interesting looking into Alan Kelly’s finances,” Falk said.

“Did you?” Dacian affected boredom, not because he was particularly interested, but because he wanted to make it absolutely clear how bored he was. Sometimes nothing worked better than exaggeration. He didn’t look up from his notes, for good measure.

Falk apparently took that as a hint that he should cut to the chase. “How long have you been contributing to his campaign?”

Dacian very nearly snapped the lead of his pencil. He looked over despite himself, and Falk was sort of half-smiling, one side of his mouth quirked up, but he didn’t look amused. There was an undeniable spark of interest in his eyes.

Dacian looked away. “Don’t flatter yourself thinking it has anything to do with you,” he said automatically, wincing internally even as he did. Don’t defend yourself from something he hasn’t even implied! “I’ve been involving myself gradually for about a decade.”

“Then you must know a lot about him, and have a vested interest in his career and how to benefit from it, right?” Falk leaned over, one arm resting on the desk, lowering his voice to a throaty, surreptitious murmur that Dacian absolutely hated being attracted to. “We’re the only two vampires in this school who’ve managed a 4.0 so far, including in politics—which is just sad, but let’s ignore that for a second. You know I have plans for Kelly, and now I know you have some, too. I think we could really help each other out.”

Dacian looked at him in disbelief. “You want us to work _together._ Instead of competing. For equal benefit? Do you not understand how this works?”

“I understand how most vampires do things, and I understand it works out for the ones on top,” Falk said calmly. “I don’t see why a win-win situation wouldn’t work, just because us trying to fuck each other over would work out really well for one of us.”

“I’m going to be nice and just pretend you never suggested this.”

Falk leaned back in his seat again. “Suit yourself. But if you change your mind…”

That time, his faint grin did feel like he was amused, like he was laughing at Dacian a little.

  


* * *

  


Dacian put it out of his mind.

He didn’t even think about it.

Not even once. Not for a year and a half. It certainly didn’t prey on his mind until graduation, because that would be silly, and stupid, and impractical.

And one thing he definitely didn’t do was breathe a word of it to his friends. For a while, he stopped bringing up his discussions with Falk entirely, until he started getting roundly teased about obviously warming up to him, because complaining proved attraction and not complaining apparently proved he liked the guy now? Whatever. At least continuing to complain reminded him of why he absolutely didn’t like Falk even a little bit, but he felt like his heart just wasn’t in it.

After he’d earned his associate degree, he made plans to meet up with the others in a week or so and didn’t say a single word to Falk. They hadn’t shared any classes that term, which made it easier.

  


* * *

  


So it was very unfair when Falk was at the Waffle House they all (sans May) ended up meeting up at two weeks after graduation at 1 A.M.

All of them recognized him by then; they’d all shared at least one class with him. Even buried deep in a hoodie he was recognizable, though maybe not to anyone who didn’t already know him. Dacian looked away from him as soon as he noticed, and so clearly saw literally all of his awful friends look first at Falk, then over at Dacian to see what his reaction was. He very purposefully looked at his menu, even though that wasn’t the best distraction, given that he didn’t eat or drink anything except blood and so never ordered.

He changed his mind and stood up. Part of him was furious that he’d been put in this situation, but more of him wasn’t even sure what exactly he was going to do. He was also aware that his dramatic gesture was made a little less dramatic because he was sitting next to Hana, and he had to wait for her to scoot over and get up to let him out of the booth.

“Oh, here we go,” Hana murmured, rolling her eyes as she did so.

Beelzebub was a more enthused sort of exasperated. “Either rip out hiz throat or make out with him, for fuck’z szake!” he called after Dacian, more than a little too loud.

He was pretty sure there was no way Falk hadn’t heard that, glancing over and then standing up to meet Dacian. “So,” he greeted. “Did you change your mind?”

“This is why I don’t think you understand what you’re saying,” Dacian said. “You’re too blunt for subtle politics. You don’t have enough common sense to know when to be delicate.”

Falk smiled. “You’d be surprised. But even if that’s true, you know how to be delicate. Talking to a political rival every day just to keep tabs on him. We could balance out each others’ weaknesses. Vampires alone are powerful, but two working together?”

Dacian understood clearly what Falk was getting at. He didn’t have to say it. _We could be unstoppable._

“I suppose you could be valuable to me,” Dacian said. “And you obviously won’t get very far on your own.”

Falk’s grin spread across his face, showing off his mouthful of jagged teeth. Dacian wanted to press his tongue into his mouth and taste blood, and bit his own tongue to avoid giving into the urge. “You’re so rude,” he said, and Dacian knew he wasn’t imagining the fondness. “If that’s the only way you know how to do things, sure. I owe you.”

He was as much of an ass as Dacian’s friends, in a different way. “Oh, be quiet and come sit with us.”

  


* * *

  


They stayed at the Waffle House long after the others left, to talk politics. And if, after Falk teased him with a "Now, how can I repay you?" Dacian kissed him in the alleyway instead of choosing to tear out his throat or trap him somehow and leave him for the sun, well...

Maybe he couldn’t keep that from his friends forever. But he wasn’t going to admit it to them immediately, at any rate.

**Author's Note:**

> Vampire and Vampire romance, featuring terrible friends A Demon, A Hive Of Bees In A Human Suit, A Jorōgumo, and A Krasue. The "sounds are louder when you're farther away" part is from legends of a similar creature called the manananggal, though. Both legends are real gross! I wouldn't eat with either of them myself!
> 
> I really hope you enjoy this fic and had a great time in this exchange. Happy Halloween!


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